1. Field
The invention relates to a system and method for simultaneously playing back synchronized audio and video data from multiple users in an online environment, such as social media using Internet browsers. The invention enables online users, through an online environment such as social media through Internet browsers, to playback synchronized multiple audio and video data in real time, and to change the tempo during audio and video playback while maintaining the original audio key (i.e., pitch). The invention also enables online users to change the original audio key (i.e., pitch) during audio and video playback while maintaining perfect synchronization between audio and video data.
2. Description of Related Art
In today's Internet age, it is often desirable to collaborate on creating or playing back audio and video contents in an online virtual environment, for example social media using Internet browsers, because collaborating artists are often geographically separated and gathering all collaborating artists at one location for creating, experiencing, practicing, and/or collaborating can be difficult and expensive. For example, in the context of music creation and performance, it is much easier and economically advantageous if musicians can collaborate as a virtual band.
Moreover, musicians often have varying levels of skill in different aspects of music, such as skill level in different musical instruments, vocal abilities, music creativity, and varying perspective of music, such as music theory, composition, and other traits that affect the artistic rendition of music. Contributions from different musicians often lead to different music creations. Not every musician, however, knows or has access to all the music elements that may be contributed by other musicians. Thus, systems and/or methods that enable a user to post his or her initial music creation on an online platform so that other users may access the initial music creation and contribute additional music elements is desired.
Prior art discloses ideas of an online collaboration system which enables users to post an idea on the online platform of a website browser and enable other users to see the idea and give their comments or feedbacks to the idea and rate the idea in a discussion section. It is well known in the art to provide music uploading and downloading. Artists, including musicians, often look for sharing creative projects that utilizes audio and video expressions within a collaboration online environment so that they can reveal their projects, performances and attract other people to contribute and enjoy their projects (such as a music creation). For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,487,173 discloses a methods and systems for providing a collaborative music website where users can create and edit their music with others. This invention includes remotely uploading music tracks that are created off-line by users, creating a band, and joining other users' band via an online network. Other inventions also outline methods and/or systems for providing an online collaborative website where a musician either join a virtual band with others or create their own virtual band to attract others and edit music tracks remotely (i.e., off-line). These inventions, however, provide for only music (audio) collaboration, which includes multiple music tracks. No video collaboration is disclosed. Further, these inventions do not disclose online editing (such as changing pitch or tempo) or online audio and video playback. When audio and video data are played back in an online environment in real time, audio and video synchronization is very important and difficult to achieve. It is difficult to playback a plurality of audios and videos with perfect synchronization because the data formats between audio and video are different. This is a common issue in online playback that audio and video would go out of sync, which may happen right at the beginning or occur slowly over time. Many factors may cause this problem, including data transfer rate. Video generally requires more data and longer time to process, matching video frame rate and audio sample rate in real time can be challenging. Furthermore, it is difficult to simultaneously playback a plurality of video frames in synchronization because each video frame's data size being uploaded within one larger collaborative frame is individually different. The size of each video frame may be different depending on its individual data amount used, even if the aspect ratio of each video frame is identical. Data size of each individual video frame is based on the image color and image movement within the uploaded video contents. Some video frames have more or less color saturation and speed of movement when playing. The present invention enables synchronization of the multiple individual frames with different Data size for each frame to play as one combined frame. None of these prior inventions enables users to upload and edit audio and video data with synchronization.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method for online collaboration of multiple tracks with audio and video data synchronization. Because of this system and method, users may share their creative works online while other users may view and listen to the creative works online, contribute additional video and audio elements to the creative works online, participating users may playback audio and video data in sync and in real time, and all users may edit music and audio online (such as changing pitch and/or tempo) in real time. Separating and syncing multiple tracks of video and audio online enables users to bring their creative works and collaborate with people all over the world.